“You’re thinking too much.” Again, her fingers flitted over his brow. “I don’t want you to think.” Her tone deepened. “Especiallyof anyone else.”
Yes, he was thinking. And someone else had been part of those thoughts, too. But not in the way she believed.
“I’m fully present.” And he was. He was embodied and aware, like a sailor with eyes trained on the sea. He’d do everything he could to navigate to a safe harbor. “I’m not thinking of anyone else. I don’t want anyone else but you.”
He cupped her opposite arm, a physical entreaty that she believe him. Her breasts brushed against his chest as he leaned in to place a warm, lingering kiss just above the bridge of her nose. The furrow in her forehead gradually flattened beneath his lips. Her hand crept up his back until her fingers were again threading through his hair.
She let out a shuddering sigh as she forced his head down.
“Kiss me again.” Her breath teased his face. “Kiss me as you did at the ruins. Kiss me properly and put my dreams to shame.”
“My pleasure,” he replied, bringing his mouth down hard only to give himself completely to the heavenly softness of her lips.
*
Cassie was, inessence, trapped beneath her husband. And though she did not think she could escape him, her heart inexplicably soared free. With deliberate provocation, she bent her knee, making sure she slid her thigh along the hard length she now understood was his manhood.
In response, he groaned and deepened their kiss.
How could touching in one place—their mouths—leave her throbbing in another? A place, in fact, she didn’t have a word to name?
But a lack of verbal identification didn’t stop her body from demanding attentionthere. She was swollen and hot and greedy. She wanted to be beneath him, to take him fully into her body.
She’d always been told the point of the “marital act” was the planting of a babe, a tiny being to grow inside her—part him, part her. She wanted to carry his child, physical proof they would forever be entwined. But her true desire had always been to plant herself in his heart.
He pushed himself up without breaking their kiss, pressed down on the inside of her knee and maneuvered into the space between her thighs. Last time, her body had responded to his as if he were a threat. This time, his confidence, his ease, his sincerity, released her fromthose shackles.
He’d told her he was fully present. As his hands stroked her flesh, she didn’t have anything left but the present. If she wanted to live—fully live—she must hold on for dear life.
She had no past. She sensed no future. Only now.
Only him.
He touched her as if each careful caress spread thick and vivid paint on her body’s canvas, forever changing how she would be seen, how she would be perceived, both by herself and by others. She was no longer Cassandra, sweet and gentle. She was Cassandra, wanton and bold.
When finally, he pulled back, his eyes had a strange and thrilling glow.
“I missed this,” he murmured. “I missed you.”
How could he miss something he had never known?
As soon as her mind formed the question, her heart rebelled.
She understood what he’d meant. The promise of this passion had existed between them from the very start. What was happening felt less like an introduction and more like a return.
Under his gaze her breasts became even heavier, more exquisitely sensitive. Every time she took a breath, she tingled as her night rail raked over her puckered skin. The titillating sensations, too, were only a promise, a foreshadow of something to come.
On their wedding night, he’d caressed her nipple, and she’d mewed in embarrassed protest, not because the sensation hadn’t been pleasurable, but because she’d felt too much pleasure.
Outrageous pleasure.
She’d neither anticipated nor prepared for the surge of desire. Now, if he did not touch her there soon, she thought she might thrash.
As she studied him shyly, a slight smile graced her lips.
“You can touch me,” she repeated his earlier invitation. “If you want.”
“Oh?” The sound he made was part groaning want, part laugh. “Oh, yes, Iwant.”
